It may be doubted whether these doctrines, if admitted, would amount to a vindication of slavery. It does not appear to us quite certain that we are justified in compelling our fellow-creatures to engage in a particular employment, merely because that employment gives them exquisite pain. If a large portion of the human race be really placed in regions where rest and shade are the most delightful luxuries which they can enjoy, a benevolent man may perhaps be of opinion that they ought to be suffered to doze in their huts, except when necessity may drive them to employ an occasional hour in angling, gathering berries, or scattering a little rice in the marshes. We are entitled to demand that this point shall be saved to us; but we do not foresee that we shall need it. We assert, and will prove, that Major Moody has not established his theory; that he has not even raised a presumption in its favour; and that the facts on which he relies are either such as have no relation to the question, or such as occur daily in every climate of the globe. We will begin with the case with which Major Moody would have done well both to begin and end--the case of the liberated Africans who were placed in Tortola. We must premise, that no experiment was ever made under circumstances less favourable. The Negroes, when received from the holds of the slave ships, were in a state of extreme weakness and disease. Of six hundred and seventeen Blacks who were taken from the Venus and the Manuella, two hundred and twenty-two died before they could be settled as apprentices. (1) The constitutions of many who survived were completely broken. By the masters to whom they were apprenticed, they were frequently treated with inhumanity. The laws and institutions of Tortola, framed for (1) Mr. Dougan’s Report, p. 7.